TERRA

The performance connects gardening, plants cultivation, land (lat. terra) with stories about migrations and immigrants. It contemplates effort, pain, and adjustment it takes to be “transplanted” during the process of migration, especially when that movement has been involuntary.

Reflecting about migrations, the performance strives to awaken empathy with people that were ” transplanted” – through movement, songs, contact with the plants, earth and water by actress and musician Ljubica Damčević. The performance includes videos in which documentary images are intertwined, just as the fates of emigrants.

The motivation for creating TERRA is the need to talk about migrants and migrations in a more compassionate way

We live in a time of vast amounts of global information through numerous media and digital platforms. This makes some facts and stories quickly accessible, but on the other hand it does not seem to contribute to a general understanding of the Other and a sense of solidarity and help.

Statistics and TV reports do not speak as loudly as we would like, even when they are alarming. Forced displacement has doubled in the last decade. Despite numbers estimated at 122 million in 2024 [according to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency], we are getting used to the suffering of refugees and migrants around the world.

But then, I started to imagine this performance while watching one documentary, at the exact moment when Syrian immigrant desperately screamed:” You can’t do this to us, you can’t do this!”. Standing in the crowed in front of the official of one European country who was reading the list of names to be relocated to the another country, this man was about to be separated from his family and friends.

The performance TERRA is directed at a compassionate place in our minds and hearts that has the capacity to feel the pain of others. Devised in such a way to awaken the awareness of the need to care for the people, likewise plants and our natural environment – our planet with our fellow citizens who are seeking new home. .”

Director, Jadranka Andjelic

Beside Serbia it has been performed, with great success, at festivals in Spain, The Netherlands, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The performance can be performed in English, Spanish, Italian, French and Serbian [original].

Impression

This afternoon I watched a short, poignant performance by DAH Theater, TERRA .

In it, plants and people play, both of them with similar fates: uprooted from their yard and forcibly transplanted into another world – not always friendly and inclined to help. In the documentary video that is part of the play, people are not just numbers of refugees, they are faces, expressions, views from which thoughts and feelings can be read.

The whole performance is presented before us by the outstanding artist, violinist, singer, actress, performer Ljubica Damčević. Her role is a ball of short texts but also songs in Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, our language, which she sings to us in her wonderful soft and dark voice. Admiration for Jadranka Andjelic’s delicate and investigative direction.

Ivana Stefanovic, composer, writer and art critic

Concept and Direction: Jadranka Andjelic

Performer: Ljubica Damčević

Songs: Traditional songs from Syria, Corsica, Sardinia, Cyprus, Jewish

Plants: Chlorophytum comosum [Spider plant], Nephrolepis exaltata[Fern],

Amaryllis, Calluna Vulgaris [Heather], Bromeliaceae [Bromelia], Thuja, Hibiscus

Text montage: Jadranka Anđelić i Ljubica Damčević

Costume and set: Jadranka Anđelić

Video editing: Una Škandro

Sound recording: Zoran Vasiljević

Research: Teodora Barać